There are those of us who have discovered, through much trial and error, that we are not employable. I do not deal with authority well, even after military training. I like to set my own hours. I’m independent to the point of annoyance when I have been employed. (Annoying to those I work for, not myself.) I like having the final say, and being responsible for what happens. All of this added together has meant that despite several efforts to be employed, I have never been as happy as when I’ve been self-employed, and that includes periods of starting out when the possibility of making ends meet has been unknown.
Stable employment, just like self-employment, comes with a price, and it’s a price I’m not comfortable with. And in today’s economic climate, what can we count on anyway? So self-employment works well for me, and I couldn’t imagine going back to an employed status ever.
But what does it take to be self-employable? It’s not the same as being employed, and one of the things that it requires is an independent spirit. I’ve watched many people undertake the rigors of opening their own business, and mostly they succeed. Sometimes they don’t, but that doesn’t mean they give up and go back to looking for a job – instead, they find something else they can do. As a lifestyle, self-employment is hard to beat. You can make all the money you want, without having to ask for raises. You can manage your own schedule, which often means working far more overtime than you could possibly afford to pay yourself. It means knowing how to do a wide variety of things, and how to find out how to do things that you don’t know how to do. It calls for knowing yourself, and what you’re capable of, and interested in, and where you want to go.
It requires the ability to leap into the unknown without knowing if there’s a net to catch you if you fall. Perhaps, if you’re lucky, you have a parachute to slow your descent, but the safety of the parachute might keep you from taking the risks that you need to take.
One of the sticking points for those wanting to be self-employed is knowing how to find your own answers to the burning questions that pop up on a daily basis, and this is because there is no one-size-fits-all approach. There are books that tell you how to get started, and blogs that tell you how to market and sell, and lists of potential clients, and courses with knowledge to gain, but how you combine the resources available is up to you. No one else can tell you how to fit together the pieces to work for you, and no one else can tell you what you need to do.
The ability to make your own decisions is essential, and part of making your own decisions is deciding what you need. Your new job description is no longer being written by someone who doesn’t know you. You need to write your job description, even if only metaphorically, and you get to decide what to put in, and what to take out.
If you’re looking to freelance because a “real” job is hard to come by, you’ll need to shift your outlook in order to be successful, or keep sending out that resume. Until you believe that this course of action is a real job (and believe me, it’s real enough), you won’t put all of yourself into it, and until you do that, you’ll be treading water.
Enough with the metaphors. Set your own goals. Do your own homework. Mix and match the available resources. Find your own answers. Search within yourself for what it is you want, and set out for it.
Then write your own ending.
This is all about you.
